


Maria

by Yeah_Im_A_Streetlight



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Childhood, Closeted Lesbian Character- only mentioned, Eating Disorders, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Maria Reynolds' past, Multi, Recreational Drug Use, broken home, suicidal character (near the end)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-03-08 19:06:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 6,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13464627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeah_Im_A_Streetlight/pseuds/Yeah_Im_A_Streetlight
Summary: Disclaimer- please do NOT read if you are sensitive to, or triggered by, mentions of drug/alcohol abuse, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts, or implied physical abuse........ maria- from the latin, a name of debated meaning. believed  to mean ‘sea of bitterness and sorrow,’ ———but other translations fall more closely to ‘rebellion’.......Or, Maria's life before Alex Hamilton.





	1. Second Grade

Her big brother sometimes told her it hadn’t always been like this.

“You know, Maria,” Lewis always said, “Everything used to be perfect. You don’t remember, because you were such a little kid.”

“Tell me about it, Lew!”

“Maria…”

“C’mon. Please?”

“Okay. You wanna hear about the fair, or about the baseball game?”

“Baseball game!”

“Okay. So when you were a really little baby, I think you were two-,”

“You were eight!”

“Shh. Yeah. Anyway, Dad took me and mom and you to a baseball game.”

“Yankees versus Red Sox!”

“Yes, be quiet! Yeah, Yankees versus Red Sox. So we drove all the way to New York, and we bought hot dogs-,”

“And the guys at the baseball game gave out free cotton candy!”

“Yeah. Let me tell it. So, we got there, and it was a huge stadium, Maria. It was bigger than our house fifty times.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow.”

“And you caught a foul ball, and now it’s in my room cause you gave it to me!”

“Why don’t you just tell it?”

There was always silence for a moment, before Lewis would sometimes mutter under his breath, “Everything was different then.”

“I’m gonna play baseball someday,” she said to break the silence.  
“Yeah? I hope you do, Maria. I hope you do.”

Maria always knew her family was different. Her parents were the only ones who never came to parent teacher meetings, out of every kid in the whole second grade. She was the only one who had to go to the guidance room every Wednesday, to meet with creepy old Ms. Harrington who had pictures of cats on the walls and whose room always smelled like the apartment her grandma had had, before she died.

It scared her just a tiny bit. But she didn’t say anything. Maria Reynolds didn’t get scared.

She was pretty sure the other girls in her class were afraid of her. They were always bringing their lip gloss and their pink hairbrushes to school, but Maria was proud of her wild black mane of curls, even if all the other girls had silky blond waves. She never wore pink, only t shirts that had been her brothers six years before.

And so all her friends were boys.

But no one ever came over to her house.

The reason for this was because of her parents. When she got home from school, Lewis would take her up to his bedroom and lock the door. He would do his homework while she lay on his bed, being very quiet because eighth graders had a lot of stuff to do.

Then when they were finished with their work, Lewis would bring her downstairs and cook some kind of boxed meal. They would eat it fast, then run back upstairs because that’s when Mama came home. Seven forty five.

Maria didn’t used to know to avoid Mama when she got home. She used to follow her around, and that was fine. That’s before Mama taped her drawers shut, and before Maria started to find pill bottles open everywhere and before the house sometimes smelled like the skunk that had lived under their porch for two months.

She didn’t know what these things meant, but when she told Lewis about it all, he swore. Loud. Her eyes widened, and Lewis told her never to say the words he had said. Then this routine started, with the running.

The pills started when Maria was five. Then her daddy started coming home really late and he wouldn’t say goodnight to her or Lewis. That’s when she officialy moved into Lewis’s room.

She wasn’t scared of anything, but maybe it was a little scary to hear the things her parents screamed at each other, to see bottles of medicine that she wasn’t supposed to touch, to open cabinets to get out the graham crackers and find open bottles instead, to hear things crashing in the middle of the night and screams.

One day, though, her mom actually talked to her.

“Maria, you should join a school club. It’ll be good, you’ll get home later.”

Lewis had thought it was a good idea, so she looked around the elementary school halls for signs.

 

BASEBALL TRYOUTS THIS MONDAY! EVERYONE WELCOMED!

So that Monday, Maria showed up to baseball practice. Some people laughed. Some people told her that girls don’t play baseball. 

She hit a home run the first time she was handed a bat. The second time, she made it all the way to third base. The last time, she bunted it. 

She thought she was going to cry.

After all, her dad always said to her that if you fail, no one wants you around. 

“We don’t fail, Maria. You fail and you’re out.”

And then she heard it. 

“Ooh, Miss Superstar isn’t so good anymore. Why don’t you go back to ballet class where you belong?”

She dropped the bat and spun around.

It was a fifth grader. 

She gulped, but walked up to him calmly.

“Maybe you’re just jealous, cause I’m gonna get on the team and you aren’t,” she said loudly.

“Oh, really? Well, maybe you should go play with your fairy princess friends and leave everybody alone,” he said, bending down to her level.

She brought her arm back and solidly punched him in the face. He staggered. She didn’t look back.

She knew she hadn’t really done anything good enough for her parents to hear about, but she was kind of proud.

She hadn’t tucked her thumb. She’d been like an expert. And now there was a tiny cut on her knuckle. 

She waited until it healed slightly, then peeled off the scab and made the cut deeper so it would leave a scar.

A battle wound.


	2. Fourth Grade

She had at least made it onto the baseball team. She still had the deep mark on her knuckle that kind of looked like a little heart. 

There were only a few new things about her life. Everything else was still the same.

One was that her teacher had figured out she had something called a learning disability. She had no idea what this was. Apparently, numbers and letters got jumbled up in her brain.

The girls teased her. She still had no friends except for the boys who would compare scars and how fast they could run.

But she guessed this was probably true. She still couldn’t tell time, even after her brother got her a digital clock with all of his money from pet sitting. But after she stared at the numbers for a minute, she knew what the first one looked like. And that was all she needed.

She just had to use it to figure out why her dad came home when her clock numbers were all ones and twos, smelling like that scary storefront that people sometimes had punching fights in front of, the one that Lewis always pulled her far away from. Maybe that store made people angry, she reasoned in her room when her clock numbers reached the threes, because now it seemed like her dad was throwing things, and wasn’t that what happened in these stores?

Either way, her dad always came home smelling weird and really mad about something. He would yell and break things and he could hurt you, if you were in the way. Lewis always stayed out, trying to calm him. Maria hid under the bed.

“I don’t want you to go out there,” she’d cried one of the first times, “What if you die, and then I have nobody in my whole life?”

“I’ll be fine. I need to make sure he doesn’t hurt Mom.”

“I don’t care about Mom! I care about you!”

“Maria! I’ll be fine, but stay under the bed and don’t move until I come back for you.”

Under the bed was a new home for her. If she pressed one hand to the wall, she could feel the buzzing of all the pipes and wires and it was calming to her. If she pressed one hand up, she could feel the springs of her mattress. If she pointed her toes and stretched her legs out as far as they went, she could touch the ends of the rag rug her brother had made for her, even if people called him a girl for sewing something together.

Being under the bed, she almost didn’t hear her dad screaming and throwing stuff at her brother, and she almost forgot that her mom was in there too, probably overdosing on something she shouldn’t have.

But she was never scared. The only reason she kept her stuffed dog under the bed was because he liked it down there, not because of her. Even though sometimes, the walls didn’t help and even if she was touching something with all her limbs, she would still panic and breathe really, really fast and cry because she didn’t want someone to die.

Mr. Jones across the street had died last year, and they carried him out on a stretcher with a blanket over him. Now a super smiley family, all blonde, live in that house, and they bring over pies on holidays that her dad usually smashed when he was mad.

But what if Lewis was on that stretcher?

It didn’t help if she was surrounded by walls then. So then she would squeeze her dog really, really tight until Lewis came back. 

Sometimes that was an hour.

Sometimes that was two hours. 

But he always came back.


	3. Fifth Grade

They called her fat.

At first it wasn’t really a big deal, just one girl who was jealous, she guessed. But then it was everyone, the whole class, and suddenly it was a big deal, especially when someone wrote “fat girl” in big red letters on her project that she’d spent hours on, all about her family. 

She didn’t think she was that fat when she looked in the mirror. Actually, she thought she was pretty skinny. Too skinny, the school nurse said, but that was because she barely ever had breakfast, and not too much lunch.

Her brother told her that sometimes, people say you’re fat when they want to be mean but don’t know what to say. Because, he says, she isn’t fat. Not at all.

Still, she decides to stop eating lunch. She eats dinner anyways, it’s not a big deal.

Lewis doesn’t like her to watch adult TV, but when he’s not home, she watches a show with a girl on it who everyone thinks is pretty, and she is skinny. No one thought Maria was pretty.

And the stores which are at the mall, a place she hates and loves, always have girls in the pictures who are really skinny. She is only going to eat again when her stomach looks like that, she vows to herself.


	4. Sixth Grade

She’s in middle school now. 

Her new school is big, almost 500 sixth graders. And she quickly learns some things.

She isn’t supposed to eat lunch here, either, which she’s fine with. She hasn’t told Lewis, but she’s fine with it. Her legs aren’t so big anymore.

She also isn’t supposed to talk to certain people. It’s weird for her, but as a tomboy, she isn’t allowed to talk to any of the blond girls with nice clothes, or they look at her and laugh.

Middle school isn’t what she thought it would be like, at all.

One weekend, she goes to the mall. She uses all the money she’s gotten in her whole eleven years, and buys clothes, shoes, hairbrushes, and shampoos. 

The next day at school, she’s about to sit alone at lunch when a girl walks up to her. It’s one of the three blond girls who sit in the middle of the lunch room and who every boy in the school likes.

“Maria, right?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Well, we noticed you got new clothes. And we wanted to know if you wanted to sit with us at lunch.”

It wasn’t a question. She sat.

Her new friends didn’t comment on her untouched lunches. They would eat, yes, but they talked about their weight all the time. And about bikinis, and about their hair, and boys, boys, boys. She learned to stop being friends with the kids who would compare skinned knees, and she learned how long it was supposed to take to get ready for school.

Apparently, she had to have a date now, and since the Halloween dance was coming up, her new friends told her she had to come with a boy.

She was debating being sick that day.

Then a guy walked up to her in the hallway. He was kind of ugly, with greased back hair and weirdly shaped pants, but he was the second most popular boy in school. She knew what was coming, because, according to the most popular girl, if she wanted to be popular she had to go with him.

They went to the dance together, and when he tried to kiss her afterwards she said she had to go to the bathroom. Then she ran out the door and stood in the parking lot and hyperventilated next to one of the bushes. Then she went to the office and asked to use the phones, and seeing herself in the mirror, with mascara everywhere, she knew they’d let her in. She called the house phone seventeen times, until Lewis picked her up with his beat up car.


	5. Seventh Grade

She’s in seventh grade when her brother asks her to come into his room.

She does, not expecting much, so she brings along her huge pink flip phone and lip gloss.

He tells her to sit down.

“Maria,” he says, “this was never because of you. I want you to know that.”

Her eyes flicked up to meet his, then scanned the room, looking for a suitcase or something.

“Maria.”

She looks back at him.

“I… I’m eighteen now. When I graduate… this summer, I’m joining the army.”  
She looks at him in shock.

“Maria?”

“No,” she says quietly.

“I’m sorry, kid! I’m gonna visit, and write, but this home, this family… I just can’t do it anymore.”

“And so you’re gonna leave me with them? With Mom? Who never comes out of her room? And with Dad, who’s back at three in the morning to scream at us all and then kiss a vodka bottle?”

“Hey, you’re twelve, kid. It’s gonna be okay, I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Fuck you.”

“Maria, language,” he said halfheartedly.

“No! We stick together, Lewis,” she said, tears rolling down her face, “you don’t just… leave.”

 

She called her friends to talk about it.

“My brother-,”

“We’ve never met him! Is he hot?”

“No, that’s not the point… it’s… he’s joining the army.”

“Oh, so he’ll come back with abs?”

She realized then that these girls weren’t getting her anywhere. She needed to get somewhere in her life or she’d never get out of this house. It was not a home.

That night, when Lewis told her parents, her dad was proud… until he decided to celebrate with alcohol. And her mom cried and then went up to her room. Again.

And so Maria went to her room, locked the door, and lay under the bed, toes pointed to the drawer and arms touching the walls- sure, it was babyish, but she was safe for now.

She heard Lewis knock on the door.

“Maria? Please, please, please don’t lock me out.”

She just lay there.

She could feel the floor and the walls, and it didn’t matter how often her mother was high or how much her dad would yell. The cracked glass in the kitchen didn’t matter, and neither did the splintered wood on the banister. 

That was when she decided to stop caring. Because without Lewis, there wasn’t any point. She was done with her friends. She was alone, and that’s what mattered.

If no one was there for her, that was fine. She would be alone.


	6. Ninth Grade

With Lewis gone, there’s not much to fight anymore. Her dad still drinks, and there’s still yelling and “Maria, open your goddamn door”, but she’s older now. She’s a teenager. And she leaves behind her lip gloss wearing friends.

The world was bleak and big, and she wasn’t in any position to fight that. She was just there, going along with the tides, wishing her life would just stop, since nothing would ever come out of it.

Maybe she was depressed. And maybe she didn’t care.

The first time she broke into her mother’s room was in December. Her mom’s drugs weren’t hard to find, but she still got a rush when she snuck out of the door holding a ziploc that she’d found in the closet.

No one was her friend, in this new mindset. Sure, there were other kids who would smoke weed and drink, but she was above that. She didn’t smoke to look cool. Because she didn’t care how fucked up her life got- she didn’t want to be in it.

She stopped writing to her brother.

In middle school, she ate a meal or two. Now, she wouldn’t bother. It wasn’t like she had any kind of “quality of life”, as her teachers called it. No one cared enough to ask her why she was so thin, so she didn’t either.

People were scared of her, she was pretty sure, with her black hoodies and black jeans and the dark circles under her eyes. Her pretty in pink friends would whisper about her. There were rumors that she smoked pot.

That was when she adopted the bright red lipstick. It was a characteristic, a mark of hers. She didn’t want to be like any other burnout, she didn’t fit into those categories. She was Maria, just Maria, not Maria the popular girl or Maria the creepy drug addict.

She was called to the guidance counseler constantly for not handing in work, and for skipping school. She would just nod and roll her eyes. They broke down her locker because there was a rumor she had cocaine in it, which wasn’t true. She knew better than to keep her stuff in there.

Her parents would still come home in the middle of the night, but now she had hours alone in her room where she could do anything. She didn’t care what people thought. She didn’t care about the consequences, because at this rate, she would honestly prefer to die, fat thighs and all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this got really dark, really fast. She's going to grow up soon, and stuff will be explained.


	7. Tenth Grade

Lewis was home for a month. 

That didn’t stop her from starving herself and promising him she would eat later. That didn’t stop her from taking pills in the bathroom, or for smiling at him when she really, really didn’t want to smile.

Until one day she went home and went straight to her room like she always did, because she didn’t want to do anything else, and Lewis was standing there looking crushed.

“Maria,” he said softly, “what…”

“Lewis, why are you in here?”

“No, don’t. What are you doing to yourself?”

“Nothing, okay? Nothing.”

“Maria, you’re turning into Mom.”

“I am not,” she said, her voice venomous, “turning in to that bitch.”

“Maria-,”

“Get out of my room.”

“No! What is your problem, Maria? I’m not blind, I can see all the stuff you keep in here, okay? You’re not yourself, you’re mean and distant, and… what happened to you?”

“What, while you’re off leaving our family, leaving your sister with a druggie and an alcoholic, you expect me to be little angel Maria? I don’t really care what you want, actually- I don’t need you to be my security blanket anymore.”

“Stop it!”

“No! Get the hell out of my room!”

“No!”

“You think things would be better if Dad didn’t drink? Yeah, maybe, but maybe things would be better if you were never here! I can do things myself, okay? I hate it here, I hate this family, I hate this town, I hate what people think of me. I don’t want you to be the perfect son now, okay? Just leave! Get the hell out of my room!”

In one swift motion, Lewis kicked open the locked bottom drawer of her cabinet.

“Oh, look. Maria, you can’t even bother hiding this stuff well.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like Mom cares! It’s not even a secret anymore, okay? We just don’t want to talk to you!”

“This family is so fucked up!” Lewis yelled.

“Yeah? Really? So maybe I’m fucked up, but at least I don’t show up after years away just to try to fix a family that’s too fucked up for you to even care!”

She made a leap for him, trying to knock her stuff out of his hands, but in a swift motion, he threw everything out of the window. 

“Oh, fuck you!”

“Right back at you,” he replied, storming out and slamming the door.

She ran to the window and saw that it had all landed in a dumpster. It dawned on her that Lewis knew what he was doing. 

“Oh, by the way, Maria? You’re quitting. I swear to god, you’re quitting, because if you’re not going to stop with ruining your life by the next time I visit, I’m not visiting anymore.”


	8. Eleventh Grade

She did try to quit. She really, really did, but not because of her, or her parents, or her “friends”. Because of Lewis. Because even if he had screamed at her, he was still the one who told her about the baseball game and who used to hide her under the bed when her dad was screaming. 

And she did quit, some things, at least. Lewis texted her every day with some kind of quote or message that reminded her, and she was really trying. Really, really trying. By the end of tenth grade, she wasn’t using drugs, but she still drank. Every time she wanted to use drugs, instead, she would just eat, a lot, and then go into the bathroom and lock the door, because technically, Lewis hadn’t said anything about making herself throw up. 

When she texted him after six months to say that she was done with all that stuff- which she had accomplished through Lewis and through (very reluctantly) talking to the guidance counselor- he flew all the way back home to throw her a party. It was just them and some Disney movies, but it was perfect, and even though he squeezed his eyes shut when she ate a slice of cake and promptly went to the bathroom, he didn’t say anything.

She knew he would later, but she didn’t care. She was just glad.

But eleventh grade was when things started to get hard. Lewis was really not around anymore, and her mom would sometimes not be home for days at a time. Her dad was still there, and there was a lot of smashing whenever it was just him and Maria. 

Throwing up was starting to disgust her. It was a personal thing, she guessed, because she loved the feeling of not eating. It gave her control, it was like a craving. But she had just gotten her dignity back.

That year, she blamed her dad for what happened. He was always in the kitchen screaming about his “goddamn wife” and about how those “fucking kids” were going to get it. So Maria avoided it entirely. If there was nothing to throw up, then she couldn’t in the first place.

She knew, deep in her heart, that it was her that caused this, that it was her that skipped meals for a full week before it happened, but she didn’t admit it. She didn’t admit anything. 

It was in PE that it happened. She was skipping again, sitting in the locker room trying with all her might not to open the locker where some ninth grader always kept pills. 

And then suddenly she wasn’t, and she was in the nurse’s office, and the nurse was asking her if she’d eaten that morning.

“No,” Maria answered truthfully.

The nurse looked again at her stomach and legs and asked her calmly when the last time she’d eaten was.

Maria knew she should lie and say yesterday, or something like that. But what was she doing with her life? She hated herself. She hated the world.

“Um. Probably about four days. Did I faint?”

Her mother was called, and the school recommended a “facility”. Maria knew this was a hospital. 

Her mother picked her up, glaring at her. 

“I don’t have an eating disorder,” Maria said, before her mother could speak.

“Well, I sure as hell hope not, because we are not paying for you to go to some fancy hospital just ‘cause you don’t want to eat. I don’t give a damn what you eat. You’re sixteen.”

\--

Her father got home considerably early that night. Maria did not mention the fees for the SATs, which she really did need to collect, but she could tell that he hadn’t drank that day.

If there was a list of things her father was bad at, it would be long, but one of the first ones would be withdrawal.

Either way, she knew her parents wouldn’t pay either way. Her mother still liked to bring up her learning disability any time Maria concentrated on school work. 

Her parents definitely liked her better when she was high.

They had dinner that night- a rare occasion, but there was an extra can of microwavable soup, which her mother stuck in the microwave for two minutes before pulling it out, remarking that if it wasn’t ready she ‘didn’t give a shit.’

Her parents ate in silence, and she flicked her spoon around the sides of the bowl, twisting her lips together, a habit that her mother despised.

“Maria, take your shoes off.” 

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want that crap in my house.”

“It’s not like you clean it, anyway.”

She didn’t take off her shoes. No one asked her again.

Another two minutes went by in silence, feeling like hours. 

“Mom,” Maria said, clenching her jaw, “I need money for the SATs.”

“What?” Her mother looked back at her, blinking. She was probably high, Maria realized, but it was too late to go back now.

“I said,” she repeated, “I need money. To take the SATs. To go to college.”

“You’re not going to college,” her mother said, glancing at her, “we don’t have that kind of money.”

“Listen, okay? I spent the money from that summer job already, and I have to take the SATs.”

“How much is it?”

“Fifty dollars.”

“Forget it, Maria,” her mother said simply.

“But I could get a scholarship if I take the SATs, and then-,”

“Maria! Shut the fuck up!” her father screamed suddenly, "I don't care if you need your shitty school fees. We aren't paying! Shut the fuck up!" And, of course, she thought to herself, he threw a dish to the floor.

She stood up from the table abruptly, walked into the garage, found Lewis’ dusty old bike from when he was a kid, and rode away. 

She made sure to stay directly in the middle of the street. Just to piss the drivers off.

She pedaled faster than she ever had before, and every time she tried to turn back, she thought of her parents. Of the money for the tests. Of her mother’s neglect for that… hospital. Of Lewis. Of the drugs that she couldn’t seem to run from, no matter how hard she tried. 

When her bike crashed on the side of the road eight miles from her house, she didn’t pick it up. She lay there, on the grass of some useless neighbor’s lawn, letting their grass sprinkler spray her in the face for hours. Until some kid saw her from his bedroom window and called the police.

They drove her home, and none of the neighbors seemed suprised at the police car in their driveway. It wasn’t the first time, anyway.


	9. Graduation

She had never taken the SATs. 

She hadn’t applied to college, either, and hadn’t bothered with any kind of essay. There was no point, she supposed, when there was no way she could get a scholarship, and even less of a chance that her parents would actually fund it themselves.

It was because of Lewis that she stayed until graduation- she really hadn’t planned on it, she’d planned on leaving home in October or so, but if there was anyone she’d listen to, it was him.

It took her only half an hour after she’d graduated to leave the school discreetly- slipping away from no one in particular, but moreso from the whole society. She took a final look at the clumps of families, and her classmates smiling and taking photos. There was a part of her that wished for a life like that, but it was too late now. 

She went home- walked through the woods to get there, following hunches of where to turn, listening to the sound of cars rolling over the asphalt to tell if she was near civilization. 

The money was taped to the back of her headboard- everything she’d been saving since she was twelve years old, from every job she’d ever done, every friend who’d lent her a dollar or two, every birthday check from her estranged grandmother in South Carolina.

The house was empty, quiet- she knew her father was at some sort of job, and her mother was asleep- her mother slept most of the day. Still, she stepped through the house cautiously, on certain steps only, having memorized this, planned for years for the day she would finally leave. It was planned to the second.

If this was a movie, her mother would run down the stairs suddenly, apologizing, and Maria would stay. There would be tears, there would be hugs, and they would probably burn her pills.

This was not a movie. And Maria was pretty sure that it’d be hard to explain to the fire department why her mother was burning Xanax in the backyard.

She walked again- not in the woods this time, but on the middle of the road, tracing the steps she’d taken a full year ago when she’d biked down the street furiously. The fury was gone now, and it had been for a while. She was past that, she was too busy getting out. 

A car screeched to a halt in front of her and she saw some girls from her history class- they spilled out, congratulating her, offering her a ride home.

“I’m good,” she smiled weakley.

She wouldn’t be going home, and they didn’t need to know that she was stopping in a used car dealership and buying the cheapest truck she could find and getting the hell out of this place.

And that was exactly what she was doing a week later- blasting Top 40 on the radio, black ringlets draped over the seat, a bag from a yard sale beside her overflowing with ancient clothes, and she didn’t know where she was going.

She almost turned back when she saw the sign for New York City flash in front of her, but it was as good a place as any, she guessed, and soon enough she was living in the basement of a Chinese restaurant, and in return she drove through the streets with orders. Every morning she woke up at five and walked to Harlem to bring back bags of chicken and vegetables. 

It was by no means perfect, but it was a home.

And the strip club down the street was by no means perfect, but it was a job. 

She was finally free, away from the family that she’d never really been a part of, and the next few months blurred by.

She didn’t react when Lewis called her to say (stoically) that her mother had died. 

It was expected. Standard. She didn’t fly home, didn’t bother calling her father, but simply took a day off of work- which was great for her anyway, anything to avoid the gaze of sixty year old men who should be home with their families. She didn’t even like guys either way- if she’d never had a boyfriend, some girls told her, that meant she was probably a lesbian.

She probably was. Of course she wanted to date women. Of course she wanted to fuck them. It had never been any sort of a question for her. 

But her sexuality wasn’t the issue at the moment, because she was supposed to be paying respects to her mother. 

 

She walked for hours that day. From 181st to Avenue A, and then down the Brooklyn Bridge. She paced Central Park, and ended up somewhere in Greenwich Village before she realized she should probably be in tears, devestated.

She realized again that she didn’t even know how she’d died. An overdose, most likely, or some kind of alchoholism. Or suicide, or mental illness… and Maria didn’t ponder this, instead the times she’d tried to run from home, the times she’d been held back, the money her mother wouldn’t spend, the bone thin legs she still had, even now, despite her constant attempts to stop.

Because when you grew up around someone like that, you couldn’t stop. That’s all she could say for the meds in her bag, for the one meal she ate every day, for the constant scrutinizing of herself- you look like a pig… you don’t deserve what you have… you should hate yourself, Maria, what are you bringing to this world?

Her mother’s words looped in her head for these hours, and the pieces fell into place, the reasons her life had been the way it was, the loss, the gain, the empty struggle, the tears, the broken windows, the lies, the furrowed brows of the neighbors, the fake smiles.

The fake smiles had haunted her, always, and would forever, she was sure. Even if the last night had been hell- even if there was broken glass everywhere, and her dinner had been a cracker or two, even if there had been cocaine involved, or her father hit her mother, or there were pills that her mother was eating off the floor- even if their home looked like a battle scene, and even if there were deadlines she couldn’t meet because she was hunched over the toilet…

She still had to smile.

She eyed a bottle on the street and kicked it, with all of her force, all the anger she’d ever felt in her life. 

It flew through the air, smashed on impact, and she looked up to see a man coated in the green glass of a beer bottle. He wasn’t even frowning, but grinned at her slowly (and had she been older, she might have thought twice, but instead she didn’t, she was a kid, she was thoughtless).

“Rough night, huh?”

“You wouldn’t know the half of it.”

“I’m James. James Reynolds.”

“Maria.”

“That’s it?”

“The rest is staying in the past.”


	10. Wicked Me Blue

It was wrong, it was so wrong, every bit of it. 

It was wrong that she had never gotten the chance to go to college.

It was wrong that the man she had married hit her. She didn’t say much anymore, either way.

It was wrong that she could barely talk. She guessed it was something to do with trauma, but she couldn’t afford a therapist, and nobody would help her either way.

It was wrong that she still barely ate.

It was wrong that she’d resorted back to the drugs Lewis had spent time trying to get her off of.

It was wrong that she was married to a man, being ordered to sleep with another man for money.

It was wrong that they were all men, because she’d always liked women, but there wasn’t much she could do now. 

 

She was sure she could list things for hours that were wrong with her life, because everything was wrong, and she was sure Alex Hamilton wondered why she never fucking spoke, and she was sure James loved it, because it was easier that way. 

On top of it all, she never could seem to get away from the past.

There had been a summon for her. They wanted her to figure out what to do with the house, because she was the last living relative.

It was supposed to go to Lewis, and she knew this, but it was hard to bestow a fucking nightmare like this one on someone six feet deep.

Long gone were the days she would take days off with situations like this. She stayed in the club, nonresponsive, not thinking about Lewis, about her father, about the car that crashed off a cliff, about the wine and beer and vodka, about her mother, about the locked cabinets in her room.

Most people would say that self destruction wasn’t an art, but if it was, she’d perfected it.

She always knew what to do- exactly what to do- depending on how much she wanted to erase, what she needed to forget, how many lines she needed to do to black out and end up in some guy’s bed, how many pills she had to take to forget about Alex’s six or seven children, how much she had to smoke to get over the other women in the club, how little food she had to eat to ignore Lewis’ voice in the back of her brain, pouding there.

He’d always told her it wasn’t her fault.

It was her fucking fault.

And it was that, that statement, which made her realize what she had to do, and she kenw she had to drive back to her hometown- or the place she’d lived for the first eighteen years she’d been physically alive. That was more truthful.

It was all a blur now- the punches she’d gotten when she’d told James about being gay, the screams she’d gotten from Alex when James had written him that letter about telling Mrs. Hamilton everything, the winces that still shocked her body from when her father had thrown those bottles…  
So she went ‘home’. She said she needed a while with the house.

She lay under the bed, and if she pressed one hand to the wall, she could feel the buzzing of all the pipes and wires and it was calming to her. If she pressed one hand up, she could feel the springs of her mattress. If she pointed her toes and stretched her legs out as far as they went, she could touch the ends of the rag rug her brother had made for her all those years ago.

Nothing about this house was made to survive. Death had been etched into the walls from the start.

She didn’t move, just contemplated how it might feel to burn a place like this to the ground. And maybe she could stay in it. She could fly away once and for all, or the ashes could. There was no point romanticizing it.

She wasn’t going to do that, she didn’t think.

The scars had just gotten too deep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am really thankful for anyone who actually read this far. I'm so sorry about this. And thank you again to anyone who read even one chapter... it's very appreciated.


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